The update of the CO2 data until 2016 for all world countries is mid September available with the release of the booklet: “Fossil CO2 and GHG Emissions Trends for All World Countries”. The annual companion report “Trends in Global CO2 and GHG Emissions” will analyse the trends and is foreseen for October and will be published at the PBL website.

The CO2 Monitoring Task force has progressed with the report on an Observation-based CO2 Monitoring and Verification Support Capacity.

This DG GROW - JRC report serves as a first step in defining and developing a European operational capacity for monitoring and verifying anthropogenic CO2 emissions with atmospheric observations of in-situ or space-born measurements making use of an atmospheric model. The report provides an insight into the underpinning requirements and foundational building blocks required and into the responsibility and long-term commitment in building this system for the greater benefit of European and international community. The system would provide European policy makers with a unique and independent source of actionable information, which would strengthen the role of the EU as global player in climate negotiations, helping to verify the five-yearly global stocktakes, which the Paris Agreement plans from 2023 onwards.

The Paris Agreement (2015) acknowledges the need to ensure environmental integrity, creates a transparency framework and plans 5-yearly global stock takes from 2023 onwards. The Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR) estimates CO2 and other greenhouse gases for all world countries and aims to contribute to an enhanced transparency.

EDGARv4.3.2_FT2016 dataset revealed that Global CO2 emissions are for the third year in a row plateauing with no further increase to a total of 35.8 Gton CO2 in 2016. The 0.3% increase in 2016 compared to 2015 is due to extra day in the leap year of 2016. CO2 emissions in the US (with 14% share of global total) reduced with 2%. Compared to 2015 there was a status quo in emissions of 2016 in China (29.2 share of global total) with -0.3% change and in the 28 EU Member States (9.6% of global total) with +0.2% change, respectively. The EU28 emissions mainly decreased over the past two decades reaching reduction levels in 2016 of 20.8% compared to 1990 and 17.9% compared to 2005. This yields since 2015 a constant EU share to the global total of 9.6%. In 2016 the EU28 emitted 3.4 Gton CO2, which corresponds to 6.8 ton CO2/cap/yr. This was obtained by a reduction of the 1.1% increase in 2015 compared to 2014 down to a 0.2% in 2016 compared to 2015.

While information for energy-related activities are available with recent updates (including 2016), no such fast updates are available for agricultural activities, but the agriculture showed historically to change much slower than the other sectors. As such, the global GHG total anthropogenic emissions (excluding land-use, land-use change, forestry and large scale biomass burning) are estimated to range between 40 and 55 Gton CO2eq/yr over the last 5 years. GHG emissions are determined by the fossil CO2 share and increased almost steadily over the entire period 1970-2012 from 24 to 47 Gton CO2eq/yr, yielding and increase in total GHG emission of 91%. The per capita GHG emissions decreased in the 1980s and 1990s till a minimum of 5.7 ton CO2eq/cap/yr but increased with 13% from 2002 to 2012 to reach 6.5 ton CO2eq/cap/yr. The share of CH4 and N2O emissions on the global total are in 1970 only 27% and 7% respectively and further decreased to shares of 19% and 6% for CH4 and N2O in 2012.

20-10-2017Global Emissions EDGAR v4.3.2: part I: the three main greenhouse gases CO2, CH4 and N2O.

In EDGARv4.3.2 emissions are calculated for greenhouse gases and air pollutants per sector and country in support of atmospheric scientists and policy makers.

For the energy related sectors the activity data are mainly based on the energy balance statistics of IEA (2014) (Internet: http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/energy/co2-emissions-from-fuel-combustion-2014_co2_fuel-2014-en), whereas the activity data for the agricultural sectors originate mainly from FAO (2014) (Internet: http://faostat3.fao.org/faostat-gateway/go/to/download/Q/*/E).